A postmodern look at Parashat Ekev’s view on God’s role in politics, the challenge of monotheism in biblical times, and the relative positions of Israel and her neighbors in God’s eyes.

Prof. Adele Reinhartz

Extermination of Canaanites by Henry F. Philippoteaux. John Clark Ridpath, Universal history 1897.

I’ve been listening to divrei torah and sermons in mainstream Conservative and Orthodox synagogues off and on for most of my adult life. From this long experience I have gathered that rabbis, especially but not only those of a certain age – my age – are trained to draw connections between the parasha and contemporary issues. Parashat Ekev provides plenty of fodder for such a treatment.

What a Rabbi Might Talk About
on the Parasha

At this point in Devarim, the Israelites are nearing the end of their long period of wandering in the wilderness and preparing themselves to enter the land. Moshe (Moses) assures them that they will be blessed if they observe God’s ordinances, and they will suffer if they do not. He also urges them to place the divine words (Deut 11:18),

Place these words of mine on your hearts and souls, bind them as a sign on your hands, and they shall be an emblem on your foreheads.

He further emphasizes the need to “teach them to your children (וְלִמַּדְתֶּם אֹתָם אֶת בְּנֵיכֶם)” (11:19).

In between the blessings, curses, and exhortations, Moses prophesies that God will destroy the inhabitants of the land and clear away the nations, burn their images, and hand over their kings, so that the Israelites may settle in this good land (8:7-8),

…A land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters… a land of wheat and barley of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.

A land where they will lack for nothing and eat their fill (8:9-10).

With these weighty topics, the parasha can easily be a jumping off point for any number of sermons on the observance of mitzvot such as tefillin, on the importance of Jewish education, and on whether God supports Jewish hegemony in the land of Israel.

Seeing the Ancient Worldview:
The Parasha Beyond the Pulpit

Nevertheless, what strikes me on reading the parasha is not so much its contemporary resonances but its strangeness. By strangeness I mean that there are elements in these chapters that underscore the profound differences between the worldview expressed in the parasha and that of many Jews today, myself included.

God’s Direct Control of the Land Based on Israel’s BehaviorOne such element is the interpretation of military and political events as a function of the tumultuous and hierarchical relationship between God and Israel. According to the parasha, Israel’s obedience will be rewarded by success in establishing herself in the land, for God will send pestilence against the nations, destroy their survivors, and ensure that (7:24),

…לֹא יִתְיַצֵּב אִישׁ בְּפָנֶיךָ עַד הִשְׁמִדְךָ אֹתָם.

…no one will be able to stand against you, until you have destroyed them.

Disobedience, on the other hand, will kindle God’s anger, so that (11:17):

[The Lord] will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.

Biblical scholars refer to this mechanism of reward and punishment as the Deuteronomistic view of history, due to its appearance here and elsewhere in Devarim (Deuteronomy). And while there are Jews and non-Jews who still think this is how the world works, most, I believe (and hope), acknowledge that there are numerous other factors – economic, geographic, cultural, political, technological, meteorological, to name some of the most obvious – that govern events such as military victory or defeat, drought or plenitude.

The Difficult Struggle to Establish YHWH as the One GodA second element is the emphasis on idolatry as the sin most to be avoided on the part of the Israelites. Today idolatry is often understood metaphorically, for example, as the blind worship of money or celebrity. But this and many other sections of the Torah and the Tanakh as a whole should remind us that the main challenge for the Israelites in this period, and indeed for many centuries thereafter, was their attraction to the worship of many gods, in addition to or instead of the God of Israel.

The parasha’s repetition of the Golden Calf event, the echoing of the Shema (10:12), and the tefillin passage – which may or may not have referred to a ritual in its original historical context[1] – themselves testify to the long and difficult process by which the God of Israel came to be seen as the one, sole, universal creator God instead of simply the god of a particular people who engaged in combat with the gods of other peoples such as the Egyptians and the Canaanites.

At least one element in this parasha, however, does resonate with our modern sensibilities, or, to be more accurate, with the postmodern sensibilities of a broad range of disciplines, including biblical studies. That element is ambivalence, and its close relative, contradiction. In particular, the parasha implies two different assessments of the non-Israelites, and two different ways of viewing the terms of God’s relationship with the Israelites.

God’s Attitude to Non-IsraelitesThe first part of the parasha (7:16) paints the non-Israelites as public enemy number one, and lumps them together as “all the peoples (כל העמים)” that God will eradicate in order for Israel to return to the land. Later, in 9:4-5, God clarifies that the miserable fate of these nations is a punishment for their wickedness.

10:17 For YHWH your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, 10:18 who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.

And further, Israel is commanded to

י:יטוַאֲהַבְתֶּם אֶת הַגֵּר כִּי גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.

10:19Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

These two views may express a before-and-after perspective: hostility reflects the process of settling a land that was already occupied by other peoples; the imperative to love the stranger reflects the ethical stance of a sovereign nation. For modern readers, however, they sit uncomfortably together in the same parasha.

God and Israel’s RelationshipThe first part of the parasha, from 7:12-22, describes the ease with which Israel will conquer the nations occupying the land as a reward for good behavior.

7:12 If you heed these ordinances, by diligently observing them, the LORD your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors; 7:13 he will love you, bless you, and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground…

Israel will not be afflicted with barrenness or disease, and they are told,

7:16 You shall devour all the peoples that the LORD your God is giving over to you, showing them no pity….

Given that Israel did enter the land, it is not unreasonable to presume that she fulfilled the terms as described here. And yet, in 9:4-6, God clarifies that these nations are being removed as a punishment for their wickedness, not as a reward for Israel’s obedience.

9:5 It is not because of your virtues and your rectitude that you will be able to possess their country; but it is because of their wickedness that the LORD your God is dispossessing those nations before you… 6Know, then, that it is not for any virtue of yours that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess…

Even worse, the passage continues with a very negative description of Israel,

9:6 a stubborn people. 9:7 Remember, never forget, how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness [and] have been rebellious against the LORD from the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place.

And then, just in case they’ve forgotten, Moshe retells the whole story of the Golden Calf and the broken tablets, emphasizing how it was only through his own intervention that God did not carry out God’s intention to destroy the people for their sins (9:26).

Appreciating—not Reconciling—Contradiction

One could, of course, reconcile these contradictions in various ways. One might say, for example, that while the nations writ large were wicked, especially when they stood in the way of God’s intention to have Israel return to the land, individual non-Israelites who lived among the Israelites—the “strangers”—were deserving of compassion and humane treatment. This does not fully solve the problem, but it may satisfy some.

The contradictory elements in the relationship between God and Israel are less easily smoothed over. But that is at it should be, since these contradictions contribute to the complexity and depth of this relationship.

The Relationship between God and Israel: Emotional EntanglementOn the surface, the relationship between God and Israel can be described as a hierarchical covenant or agreement in which the dominant and powerful partner – God – promises protection to the subordinate party – Israel – in exchange for exclusive allegiance that includes obedience to a specified set of commandments.

What this straightforward description ignores is emotion. Parashat Ekev describes God’s emotional entanglement with the people Israel. This entanglement, like many human relationships, entails love but also ambivalence, satisfaction but also disappointment, the desire to protect and the impulse to hurt.

It seems that the only way that God’s complex, ambivalent, and, apparently, deep-seated emotions towards Israel can be expressed is by taking refuge in the power differential inscribed in the covenant formula itself. This formula asserts that God has the right, and the means, to reward faithfulness and punish disloyalty. Underlying God’s destructive anger after the Golden Calf event is the pain of betrayal; underlying God’s warm description of the bounty of the land is the desire to please and provide God’s beloved, and demonstrate that divine love is steadfast.[2]

Israel’s Wrestling to Understand Its Place in the CosmosFor those who view the Torah as the literal words that God spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai, the parasha might be seen as God’s own attempt to wrestle with and give expression to God’s relationship with an unruly and stubborn people that God has chosen for God’s own. For those like me, who view the Torah as the product of oral tradition, passed down through many generations, and shaped into an extraordinary work of literature, poetry, law, theology and perhaps even some history, the parasha is a fascinating glimpse of Israel’s struggle to understand her place in the cosmos and her relationship to the peoples both more and less powerful than herself over the course of many centuries.

It is also a valiant effort to come to terms with both the randomness and the logic of human existence. As such, it extends an invitation to all of its readers, not to draw straight bold lines between its words and contemporary imperatives, but to use it as a resource in our own attempts to figure out who, where, and why, we are, as individuals, in our communities, and as members of the people Israel.

___________________

Prof. Adele Reinhartz holds an MA degree and PhD from McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario. She is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa, in Canada. She currently holds the Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian Jewish Relations at Boston College (2015-17). Adele’s main areas of research are Religion and Film, Quebecois Film, and early Jewish-Christian relations. She is the author of seven books, including Befriending the Beloved Disciple: A Jewish Reading of the Gospel of John (Continuum, 2001), Scripture on the Silver Screen (Westminster John Knox, 2003), Jesus of Hollywood (Oxford, 2007), and Bible and Cinema: An Introduction (Routledge, 2013). In addition to teaching and research, Adele currently serves as the General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, the flagship journal of the Society of Biblical Literature.

08/24/2016

[1] For a discussion of this passage in context and the development of tefillin, see Yehudah Benjamin Cohn’s TABS essay, ….

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